A Schenectady County grand jury indicted the 43-year-old woman accused of beating her eight-year-old grandson to death last month as punishment for stealing candy from a local store, officials said.

Gloria Nelligan made a brief appearance Thursday in City Court where she learned she had been indicted on March 20 in the fatal beating of Sha'Hiim Nelligan. The indictment is expected to be handed up to a county judge in coming days.

Nelligan, who was Sha'Hiim's legal guardian, is accused of creating a grave risk of serious physical injury and death by beating the boy on Feb. 22 and 23 for stealing gum from a store, according to authorities and a felony complaint.

Family members found the unresponsive boy at 10:07 a.m. on Feb. 23 at the Nelligan home at 23 Mynderse Ave. in the Vale neighborhood and called 911.

Fire department paramedics treated Sha'hiim there before taking him to Ellis Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

An autopsy determined that the boy's death was a homicide.

Neighbors and family friends said Sha'hiim was a generous, caring child who loved music and dancing.

He lived with his grandmother and three of her children, but not with his mother, said Judy Atchinson, founder of Quest, a program for troubled children in the city.

Atchinson said the boy had been coming to Quest for years where he took ballet lessons, liked to play with her dog and was one of the more well-behaved kids in her program.